Life of Brian: The musical

February 16th, 2007 by Andrew Nixon

This morning I read news that Eric Idle was planning on following up the award-winning Spamalot musical with a “comic oratorio” based on the Life of Brian called “Not The Messiah (He’s A Very Naughty Boy)”. When I read it I wondered aloud to myself how long it would take Stephen “Dogshit” Green of Stephen Green’s Voice (formerly Christian Voice) to rustle up a suitably outraged quote on the news.

It took less than twelve hours. The Western Mail of Wales (where Swansea banned the film until 1997) obviously needed to flesh out their article so gave the Carmarthenshire fundamentalist (emphasis firmly on the mental) a call. He did not disappoint with this:

We would certainly be opposing such a blasphemous and scurrilous piece of work. With it being loosely hung around Handel’s masterwork, it has got to be offensive to anyone who values music as means of expressing great ideas.

If he brings that to Britain or Wales he can expect protests. He might not even get it off the ground here because we’ve been forearmed.

We’ll ignore Green’s failure to recognise that Wales is in Britain and concentrate on his new found skill. Not only does he have a personal line to some bearded bloke in the sky, he now has added fortune telling to his abilities. He can already tell that the work will be blasphemous before seeing it. Remarkable!

Of course as the films most popular song (Always Look on the Bright Side of Life) has already been used in the aforementioned Spamalot so it gives this a slight sense of flogging a dead horse, but it should be worth a look, and the protests outside the theatre will be almost as funny as the action inside.

The article linked to has a poll going on regarding this. At time of writing, “Yes, it’s a blasphemous and scurrilous piece of work” is in the lead with 46% of the vote, but “Frankly, the outraged need to acquire a sense of humour” is pulling up on the inside just 6% behind.

I like Eric Idle’s comment (at the end of the Western Mail article) on the ending of Swansea’s ridiculous ban: ‘What a shame. Is nothing sacred?’

And who is going to take Councillor Whatsisface seriously, a man who signs up to Catholicism because it hates gays more than Anglicanism does? ‘And let us now give thanks to God Almighty for Roman Catholicism, because it allows us to hate abhorrent, loathsome, revolting, dreadful, awful, abominable, hateful, despicable, contemptible poofters with a great detestation, loathing, odium, revulsion and disgust. Amen.’

I’ll be intrigued to see if there are any blasphemy lawsuits over this. Ignoring the fact that blasphemy laws shouldn’t exist, can the creators of a work based on a work that has existed since 1979 be prosecuted?